Most sources say the composer of Gigi was born into an acting family in Vienna, Austria on June 10, 1901. Others say he was born in Berlin or give a different date. His father, Edmond, was a tenor who sang operetta throughout Europe and North and South America. While he encouraged his son's interest in music, and Fritz was writing songs by the age of nine, his mother thought theatre a bad influence and insisted the boy be sent to military school. He was unhappy there because he was small and Jewish. His father prevailed and, at the age or thirteen, Fritz was sent to a conservatory in Berlin. There he prepared to be a concert pianist and continued to write romantic Viennese melodies and waltzes. One song Katrina written when he was fifteen, caught on and swept Germany and Austria, selling two million copies of sheet music. (His father gambled away the royalties.)

In 1923 Edmond was engaged to sing in New York, and the family went with him. When he died during rehearsals, Fritz and his mother stayed on, and Fritz took a variety of jobs to support them. These included cattle punching and gold mining, delivering mail in Montana, and prize fighting. Returning to New York, he found work playing in German clubs and as one of the pianists who then accompanied silent films. He would be given a score for these, but he'd throw it away and improvise his own music which he thought suited the action better. This was good practice for his later work on musicals.

He met a fellow Viennese Ernestine Zwerlina in 1931 and they married. A few of his songs began ti be used in Broadway shows. By 1934 he had a steady job as a show pianist and resolved to write his own shows. None of these early attempts were successful but in, 1942, he met Alan Jay Lerner at the Lambs Club. Lerner was thirteen years younger, but their collaboration proved to be one of the most successful in Broadway history. Among their best were Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, Gigi and Camelot. He retired to Palm Springs but was brought back by Lerner for the 1973 revision of Gigi for the Broadway stage. In 1972 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. After retiring once more, he returned to Palm Springs until his death in 1988.

Return to Resource Library Home Page

Revised September 2010
Please credit Lyric Opera San Diego when using this material.